Not yet! Not yet! Patience! Besides, there was a more urgent need for the surprise gift of energy.

The Vom began to wake itself up.

Navigator-First Paayton RPHGLM was chewing reflectively on his tail, staring out the port of the captain’s cabin. He spoke without turning.

“Well, Exalted Captain, I have surely never seen anything like it!” The bright red pupils were unblinking.

Exalted Captain Laccota SJFD scratched his belly where two of his ventral plates joined and turned to his principal scientific advisor. “Well, Carmot, this is where you start earning the credits Lord Ilogia—his scales be thrice-blessed!—has been paying you. You’ve sat on your tail for four time-lengths while we’ve sweated dodging humanx sting-ships.”

Carmot MMYM was shorter than the other two. In fact, he was the shortest lizard on the ship. Externally he was rather a foppish specimen, addicted to brightly-colored body harness and (to the captain’s mind) the decadent habit of dyeing his incisors pink. A million years ago he would have been a quick meal for an attacking tribe. Today, however, intelligence counted for more than fang and claw. He possessed a sharp mind, excellent recall, and was as devious as anyone else on board. Personally, Exalted Captain Laccota disliked him. Professionally, he held him in high esteem.

“I don’t like it,” said the Observer-First finally.

“You are not paid to like or dislike anything,” offered Laccota patiently. “With the best will in the world, I remind you that you are paid only to estimate any potential profit in whatever we may turn up. We have definitely turned up something, here in this egg-forsaken system.”

“I reiterate; I don’t like it! I don’t understand this at all, and I don’t like what I can’t understand.”

“An attitude shared by many,” said Laccota. “Tell us what we have here, Observer-most-competent-and-overpaid, and I will like it or dislike it for you.”

“Very well, Exalted-flier-of-ships-by-the-tip-of-his-tail.” Carmot nibbled idly on a claw. “When Observer-Fifth Plowlok first brought it to my attention, as we proceeded with our standard survey orbit, my initial reaction was the mental composition of a severe reprimand. Being young, Observer-Fifth Plowlok SFDVJUTVB has the usual tendency of young explorers to draw fanciful rather than objective readings from strictly prosaic instrumentation. This time, however, he was full accurate.”

Carmot stopped chewing and waved in the direction of the glassalloy port. “We have out there, gentlesirs, an organic impossibility. An area of total living blackness that follows the contours of the land, every dip and rise, at a paper-thinness for several thousand square cluvits. Absurd, of course. There is nothing else like it anywhere on the planet. Nor, I venture to hypothesize, in this system. It is unique. It is utterly remarkable. It is impossible . . .

“Properties, gentlesirs, properties! It is not harmed or visibly affected by any kind of radiation we can generate. Possibly more sophisticated devices will be able to—I don’t know. Nor is the energy so directed reflected. It simply disappears, as measurements of the underlying basalt seem to indicate. Somehow, in the space of a mere section or two of itself, it absorbs all radiation or otherwise removes it from the understandable physical universe . . .